The present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for replaying a video of playing a game: more particularly, for recording a video of playing a game and related environments of such playing and for reviewing or replaying such video and/or environments.
In general, a smart device such as a smartphone, a tablet PC, and a personal digital assistant (PDA) is characterized by its capability of installing an application program (hereinafter, it is referred to as an ‘application’) having a specific purpose and function and executing the application.
A computer game is a kind of play that makes a processor perform predetermined computations while enabling a player to interact with a computing device, displays the computation results on a screen or a display device, and thereby gives a pleasure to the player.
In most of the computer games where a player considers himself or herself as a game character, the player may have a desire to record and review a video of the game that he or she plays and to share the video with others. To satisfy such desire, some games provide a function of replaying a video of playing a game to replay a video of the entire game that a gamer plays. However, such replay function merely repeats playing a video of the whole game played, and, therefore, a gamer who wants to seek a specific game image must repeat a laborious task of searching for a desired game image by using functions of fast forward/fast reward.
A patent document (KR 10-2006-0100696) proposes a method for storing a video of a game at the occurrence of a specific event. However, such method stores a gaming video only from the occurrence of the specific event and, therefore, is unable to record an earlier scene that may be relevant to or a cause of the occurrence of the specific event. Recording the whole gaming video may overcome such problem but creates other problems of requiring an excessive storage capacity, causing an overload of data processing, and requiring too much time to edit only desired videos after the whole video is stored.
Conventional replay functions merely store a video of playing a game. Such video lacks excitement and information necessary to review the game played. As a result, it is difficult for a game player to achieve the goal of improving gaming skills merely by reviewing such video.
Meanwhile, there is a strong market expansion and demand in the e-sports industry, where professional gamers compete each other. For a professional gamer, it is necessary to carefully review details of the play to improve skills and performance. Such necessity may not be fulfilled by conventional replay functions, which simply records and replays a video of playing a game at a specific event.